An Atlanta based, opinionated commentary on jazz. ("If It doesn't swing, it's not jazz", trumpeter Woody Shaw). I have a news Blog @
News
. I have a Culture, Politics and Religion Blog @ Opinion
. I have a Technology Blog @ Technology. My Domain is @ Armwood.Com. I have a Law Blog @ Law.

Monday, July 26, 2010

To put it politely, a few eyebrows must have arched skyward when a white boy, playing trumpet, sat in with B.B. King's band.

After all, this was Beale Street in Memphis, Tenn., in the 1940s. Social and musical segregation was still a reality in the southern United States.

"That's what they tell me, but I didn't bother about that. I just did what I liked," Mose Allison said during a recent interview. "Nobody said anything to me about segregation or anything."

Allison, of course, was that white trumpet player. He later returned to piano, which he had played since his childhood, and became a jazz and blues giant with cool, deadpan numbers like "Parchman Farm" and "Your Mind Is On Vacation". A generation of British rockers, including Pete Townshend, Van Morrison, Georgie Fame, Paul Jones and Ray Davies still sings Allison's praises. Rightly so, since it's not hard to find the Mississippi-born musician's touch in their music.

Allison is 82 now. He has an easy laugh and is as witty in conversation as you'd expect. He keeps fit by running on the beach a couple of times a week, as he has done for more than 40 years. Allison's new disc, The Way of the World, is his first in 12 years. Produced by Joe Henry, it's funny, loose and inspiring -- a wonderful addition to his oeuvre, which goes back to 1957. That year saw the release of his first album, Back Country Suite, recorded a year after he arrived in New York City. It was only with that move, he said, that he became conscious of race.

"Everybody was telling me that I couldn't do what I was doing because I was a white, Southern country boy who went to college. Nobody thought I could sing the blues," he said.

About Me

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it,"-Karl Marx - "If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor" -Desmond Tutu - "If you save one life you save all the world" -The Talmud - "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" — Isaac Asimov - Practice is the preparation for transcendence. - Cecil Taylor " - Just by virtue of their ideological stance, liberals can tolerate difference, they can tolerate not knowing, wondering ‘it could be this, it could be that.’ They can tolerate someone saying, ‘you’ve got it wrong.’ Liberals are just more open to all of that. It’s less of a problem, it’s less of a concern. They’re much more open to compromise, more open to experience—what would otherwise be threatening to people would not be as threatening because of their ideological disposition." - Scott Eidelman,